Secret Russian Encampment

Tuesday, 27th May 2008 by

Hidden away in the forests of western Russia, is a highly suspicious-looking collection of buildings which have never been place-marked by the Google Earth Community, and don't seem to have ever been mentioned on the web.

The buildings are all exactly the same size (around 30m long), are identically spaced, and point in an identical direction. They're likely to be impossible to see from the ground due to the dense forest, but the perimeter is marked by a road all the way round. Some of the buildings are missing however - several appear to have recently collapsed, and others have become completely overgrown.

There's a small branch railway that services this place from a depot in the nearest village, Semrino, and the nearest village with a Russian Wikipedia page is Susanin, just to the south. None of this information turned up any answers unfortunately.

Alexei, our multi-lingual author of Google Sightseeing Italiano who also speaks Russian, investigated further and turned up this contact page which describes the area as an active army "reserve" - which he says means a strategic reserve stock of food, arms or anything else that might be required in case of emergency...

Despite the general state of repair of the place, Alexei informs us that it's still very much active and is under 24 hour armed surveillance!

Thanks to ilya and Alexei.